The Human Side of Leadership

As technology and AI reshape the way we work, how do leaders embrace innovation without losing the human touch?

Joshua Evarts has spent more than three decades building businesses in technology. But some of his most important lessons about leadership came from an unexpected place: a cigar lounge he opened as a gathering space for conversation, community, and connection.

In this episode of The Human Side of Leadership, Dr. Pelè talks ...

Why do some employees embrace AI while others resist it, quietly avoid it, or deliberately use it poorly?

According to behavioral scientist Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, AI adoption is not primarily a technology challenge. It is a human challenge rooted in three powerful emotions: fear of job loss, threats to professional identity, and shame surrounding the use of AI-generated work.

In this episode of The Human Side of Leadership, Dr. Pelè tal...

Artificial intelligence is transforming the workplace, but are organizations redesigning work before they truly understand it?

In this episode of The Human Side of Leadership, Dr. Pelè sits down with workforce transformation executive, author, and LinkedIn Top Voice Kason Morris to explore his groundbreaking concept of Execution Visibility.

Together, they discuss why AI doesn't replace jobs, but the tasks within them, why human judgm...

What transforms a workplace from a collection of employees into a culture of ownership?

In this episode, Dr. Pelè sits down with StoneAge CEO and bestselling author Kerry Siggins to explore the leadership behaviors that create trust, accountability, and genuine ownership. Drawing from her own remarkable journey—from overcoming addiction to leading a global, employee-owned company—Kerry shares why culture isn't built thro...

What if healthcare could identify disease before symptoms appear?

And what if artificial intelligence could help physicians think better, not simply move faster?

In this episode of The Human Side of Leadership in Healthcare, Dr. Pelè sits down with Trevor Turner, MD, Co-Founder of Provida Health, to explore the future of predictive, personalized medicine.

Drawing from his experience caring for professional athletes, Special Operations...

What if burnout isn't simply a workload problem?

In this fascinating conversation, Dr. Pelè sits down with physician, chef, regenerative organic farmer, and two-time New York Times bestselling author Dr. John La Puma to explore a surprising idea: many of the health challenges we blame on stress, aging, and burnout may actually be linked to the fact that modern humans spend approximately 93% of their lives indoors.

Drawing from more t...

Healthcare professionals are some of the smartest people in the world. Yet burnout, frustration, and emotional exhaustion continue to drive talented clinicians away from the work they love.

In this episode, Dr. Mickey Lebowitz, physician, emotional intelligence expert, and author of The EQ Prescription, explains why the real challenge in healthcare is not a lack of knowledge. It is learning how to manage ourselves when the pressure ...

When patients leave the hospital, the healthcare journey is far from over.

In this episode of The Human Side of Leadership in Healthcare, Dr. Pelè sits down with caregiver advocate and educator Lynnel Townsend to explore one of healthcare's most overlooked challenges: the invisible work of family caregiving.

Drawing from years of professional caregiving experience and deeply personal stories, Lynnel explains how family caregivers oft...

After 40 years as a pediatric neurosurgeon, Dr. Alan Cohen has seen some of medicine’s most extraordinary miracles and most heartbreaking moments.

In this episode of The Human Side of Leadership in Healthcare, Dr. Pelè sits down with Dr. Cohen, Chief of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins and author of Comfort Always: Healing in the Age of Technology, to explore a question healthcare must continue asking:

As medicine advanc...

Healthcare leadership often struggles when executives and clinicians operate in silos, each seeing the world through different pressures, priorities, and assumptions.

In this episode of The Human Side of Leadership in Healthcare, Dr. Pelè sits down with Jill Bowen and Dr. Elisabeth Fontaine, co-founders of Let’s Lead LLC, to explore what it really takes to build trust, emotional intelligence, and alignment across healthcare te...

What if healthcare systems have been optimizing the wrong thing?

In this episode of The Human Side of Leadership in Healthcare, Dr. Pelè sits down with internationally recognized transplant surgeon, healthcare executive, and author Douglas Slakey to explore why great healthcare outcomes require more than clinical excellence and standardized systems.

Drawing from more than 30 years in transplant surgery and healthcare leadership, Dr. ...

We talk with Renee Thompson about why bullying and incivility in healthcare are not just culture issues, but patient safety risks. She shares how leaders unintentionally reinforce disruptive behavior, what actually happens in the moment when conflict is avoided, and how organizations can operationalize respect at scale.

• why incivility has always impacted patient outcomes, even when ignored
 • the hidden patterns leaders mi...

We talk with Teri Renfrow about why strategy often breaks down at the point of execution in healthcare, and what it really takes to move from pilot to full-scale adoption.

Teri shares how frontline experience, not just technology, determines success, and why storytelling paired with measurement is the key to building trust, driving behavior change, and sustaining results across complex systems.  

• why well-designed initiative...

In this episode of The Human Side of Leadership in Healthcare, Dr. Pelè speaks with October Ambrose, Vice President of People Partnerships and Engagement at Central Health, about what culture actually looks like inside a mission-driven healthcare organization.

They explore why culture is not something leaders define once, but something teams build and experience every day through behavior, especially under pressure.

October shares ho...

In this episode, Dr. Pelè speaks with Vanessa McNeal about what really drives burnout and performance under pressure.

They explore how leaders unknowingly operate in survival states like fight-or-flight and shutdown, and why this isn’t a motivation problem, but a nervous system and safety issue. Vanessa shares practical tools leaders can use in real moments, from simple awareness practices to quick physiological resets, along ...

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Russell Robinson about why the transition into college mirrors what new hires experience in high-pressure environments like healthcare.

We explore how emotional intelligence shapes performance under stress, and how AI coaching can help people build self-awareness, manage pressure, and show up better in real moments.

• first-year transition as a proving ground for emotional intelligence
• a simple fram...

In this episode, we unpack how trust, purpose, and people-first leadership power real culture change, and how AI can scale feedback, belonging, and performance without losing the human edge.

Gena Pirtle, founder of The People Equation and former global HR leader at Cisco, shares practical insights on redesigning HR, strengthening retention, and building cross-sector talent ecosystems for the future of work.

In this co...

Most leadership breakdowns are not failures of intelligence or strategy. They are emotional failures.

In this episode of the Leadership AI Podcast, Maggie Sass, Ph.D., Executive Vice President of Product, Research, and Professional Services at TalentSmart EQ, explores how emotional intelligence functions as the operating system beneath strategy, coaching, and decision-making.

Together, we unpack what it really means to treat leadersh...

Do you want to discover the secret recipe to align company and employee needs and create a harmonious and profitable work environment? 

Pull up a chair because today's guest, Paul ter Wal, author and president of the Virtual Speakers Association International, is here to share his transformational journey and insights on just that. 

Whether you're a CEO of a Fortune 500 company or a small start-up, Paul's pr...